Duality
by tielan
Summary: Atlantis had been her last hope; in the end, they had failed her - or she, them. She wasn't sure, anymore. Missing scene from 'Ghost In The Machine'


**Duality **

Elizabeth remembered walking these halls as a human; bone and muscle, sinew and fat, organ and tissue, tooth and nail. Light and shadows, familiar sights and scents and faces, memory and presence and longing and anchorage. _Home_.

She and her people - the Replicators she had come to lead in Niam's absence - walked through city, hemmed in behind and before by the ubiquitous marines, bound by the straits and strictures of Atlantis - a programming both lesser and greater than her own instincts, her own consciousness in the replicator's unfamiliar body.

Her last hope - and a failed one, in the end.

As their hemmed-in state was witness.

John walked beside her, almost like old times, but with a stiffness that communicated quite clearly of the conflicts inside him. She could list them like she could list the stages of a negotiation's development: guilt, uncertainty, anger, bitterness, divided loyalties - a swirling maelstrom of emotion that Elizabeth knew he was carefully avoiding - would avoid as long as he could, until it came crashing down on him.

"You know," she said, quietly enough that it wouldn't be easily audible to the marines around them, "when Teyla said her son's name was Torran John, I thought he might be yours."

He tensed, unconsciously, and Elizabeth smiled to herself, pleased with the reaction. She had learned how to deal with John over the years: throw him an emotional curve ball and he hit out, every time. But in that moment of the wild swing of the bat, in that second during which he rallied, in that instant before he found his feet, he could be counted on to be honest.

"No," he said, with a careful, casual note in his voice. "An Athosian guy."

John had always betrayed himself, in ways both small and not-so-small. She'd seen that even before Thalen confronted Teyla during the takeover incident - guessed it at least. Still, the topic wasn't right for a friend to bring up - especially a female friend who worked with him every day.

Even if she'd known that he'd never get his act together without a push to make him take that first, great step.

A part of her thought it was strange that she was sad that he'd been beaten to the punch; she'd felt jealousy back when she'd realised that John had never looked her way - not like that.

"I know, Kanaan."

"She told you?"

Her mouth curved with smug amusement at the surprise Teyla had betrayed in the confinement cell. "I guessed."

"Oh." And now his face twitched in a grimace. "But you never--"

"No." She hadn't needed to.

In the course of their conversations about the Athosians and the differentials of leadership, various Athosian names had come up repeatedly - among them Kanaan.

At the time, Elizabeth had seen a softness in Teyla's eye when Kanaan was spoken of. She'd supposed it to be an affection untainted by the conflict that always seemed present in Teyla's dealings with Halling. Kanaan was someone that Teyla harmonised with, without need of the reserve that served as armour against the people in the city.

To someone who dealt with difficult people, there was a relief in dealing with someone who made no undue demands.

At the time she'd been speaking to Teyla, she'd supposed herself wrong after all.

With the awareness of her own pride and arrogance in believing that she could hope to bring the others here to reassemble, without trouble or worry, Elizabeth admitted that the certainty she'd felt in that pronouncement could have been a misreading.

Maybe she'd been right the first time.

She didn't find it surprising that, in John's reserve, Teyla had accepted the interest of one of her own people. Teyla had never been one to yearn for what she couldn't have, any more than Elizabeth was...had been.

It felt strange to be in Atlantis again - in the city, but not of it. The duality that had marked her existence since being taken and Replicated: human and yet not, with loyalties to the people she'd made hers even as she acknowledged the loyalty she owed to the people who'd been hers to look after - envying Teyla what she had in Atlantis - in John, even as she knew it would never have been hers - not that way.

But as she strode to her fate - such a human concept, since the replicators believed that they made their own destiny rather than that destiny made them - Elizabeth smiled to herself and took the conversation in other directions, more comfortable, more familiar.

And she walked to what she supposed would be her final destiny.

- **fin** -


End file.
